Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

For ten years, the charmingly disheveled veteran FBI Special Agent E.L. Pender has been investigating the apparently random disappearances of a dozen women across the country. The only detail the cases have in common is the strawberry blond color of the victims' hair, and the presence of a mystery man with whom they were last seen.

Then, in Monterey, California, a routine traffic stop erupts into a scene of horrific violence. The local police are stunned by a disemboweled strawberry blond victim and an ingenious killer with multiple alternating personalities. Pender is convinced he has found his man, but before he can prove it, the suspect stages a cunning jailbreak and abducts his court-appointed psychiatrist, Irene Cogan.

In a house on a secluded ridge in Oregon, Irene must navigate through the minefield of her captor's various egos — male and female, brilliant and naive, murderous and passive — all of whom are dominated by Max, a seductive killer who views her as both his prisoner and his salvation. Irene knows that to survive she must play along with Max's game of sexual perversion. Only then will she be able to strip back the layers to discover a chilling story of a shattered young boy — and all the girls he adored.

A sexually charged thriller of extraordinary originality and page-turning suspense, The Girls He Adored moves furiously from the inner recesses of the psyche to its final, startling climax. Jonathan Nasaw brilliantly portrays two equally intense characters — a deviant killer and the expert who can unlock his darkest secrets — and introduces one of the most likable sleuths in recent fiction.

Review:

"[R]eaders should get their bloodmoney's worth out of this twisted tale of a serial killer with a taste for strawberry blondes....Thanks largely to Nasaw's sharp writing, familiarity breeds not contempt but interest in how it all comes out." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"Relentlessly sadistic." Kirkus Reviews

Synopsis:

A psychotic killer, Max is made up of a twisted collection of personalities struggling to find a way out. One of those personalities is insatiably vicious and leads Max to prey on women with strawberry-blond hair. His latest quarry is Dr. Irene Cogan, who is about to learn to things firsthand: what makes Max tick, and what happened to the girls he adored.

Krystal, August 20, 2006 (view all comments by Krystal)
Max, a mild mannered man, has a secret, so secret that he doesn't even know it. There is more than one person living in his body. One day, one of his alternate personalities kidnapps his psychiatrist and takes her to his home. She must try and figure out who she is dealing with before it is too late.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No(9 of 15 readers found this comment helpful)

"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"[R]eaders should get their bloodmoney's worth out of this twisted tale of a serial killer with a taste for strawberry blondes....Thanks largely to Nasaw's sharp writing, familiarity breeds not contempt but interest in how it all comes out." Publishers Weekly

"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"Relentlessly sadistic."

"Synopsis"
by Libri,
A psychotic killer, Max is made up of a twisted collection of personalities struggling to find a way out. One of those personalities is insatiably vicious and leads Max to prey on women with strawberry-blond hair. His latest quarry is Dr. Irene Cogan, who is about to learn to things firsthand: what makes Max tick, and what happened to the girls he adored.

Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and gifts — here at Powells.com.